


Words of Power

by Biting Words (Reyna_is_epic)



Series: Soulmate AUs [3]
Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Amity Blight Needs a Hug, Character Study, Eda is best mom, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Fluff, Gay, Gay Panic, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Themes, Left kinda open ended, Luz Noceda Needs a Hug, Luz is part Witch theory, Mild Angst, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Two Shot, dual character pov, rated teen for cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25946905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reyna_is_epic/pseuds/Biting%20Words
Summary: “Well, then if that’s settled,” their hands had left each other momentarily, the surprise at Grom’s resurgence causing them to break apart. Now Amity offered her hand back to her and a smile was back on her lips, the strain nowhere to be found. “May I have this dance?”Oh.
Relationships: Amity Blight & Edric Blight, Amity Blight & Edric Blight & Emira Blight, Amity Blight & Willow, Amity Blight/Luz Noceda, Eda Clawthorne & Luz Noceda, The Blight siblings
Series: Soulmate AUs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1742059
Comments: 28
Kudos: 923





	1. Chapter 1

~🐱~

Luz had been born with words on the inside of her wrist, and that was all she could really say about that. Birthmarks were normal, of course, and her mother had several so there was no surprise she’d end up with some as well, but words? Actual text?

That was weird.

Then again, everything about Luz was weird, even the things she couldn’t control. Her eyes were just a touch too big, her mouth just a bit too curved, her ears just a bit too round. That should’ve been a clue, she thinks, to her mother of what was to come in the raising of her little girl. 

It wasn’t even like the words were vague, or just a trick of the light. They were real, written clearly in small, looped handwriting that neither herself nor her mother ever had a chance of replicating.

_Well then, if that’s settled, may I have this dance?_

If they lived in older times Luz has no doubt she would’ve been referred to with the word “witch” long before she ever set foot in the Boiling Isles, (other words like ‘changeling’ and ‘fae-touched’ come to mind as well) but alas, those names had fallen out of fashion and so the ones she was subjected to were much harsher. Weirdo, freak of nature, faker, attention-seeker, she’d heard them all. The only defence she had was to cover the godforsaken mark, but even then it wasn’t like it changed much. They lived in a small town, people weren’t going to forget something like that just because it was out of sight.

So she leaned into it.

If she was going to be the weird kid because of things she couldn’t control, she might as well make it because of what she could. Besides, it was freeing, in a way. There’s never any pressure to fit in if you don’t in the first place. 

Luz never wanted to be a bad kid, and all things considered, she wasn’t. She never explicitly broke the rules, just did things that caused new ones to be written. Her grades were fine, if only because her teachers were terrified of having to put up with another year of her in their class. And sure, maybe she didn’t have friends, but who needed them? All that kids her age ever did was laugh at her, she didn’t want that, even if she was laughing with them instead.

It was the perfect armour, combat her natural weirdness with one that no one could ignore, one that eclipsed the other. People forgot all about the words, if only because they were too focused on her actions.

~

Luz has been in the Boiling Isles for little over a week before she notices something on Eda’s arm.

In her defence, there is just _so much_ to look at, not even in the Owl House alone, so forgive her if inspecting Eda’s arms wasn’t her first priority. They’re pale, covered in faded scars that range all the way from her shoulders to her wrists. A patchwork of past exhibitions and adventures gone both wrong and right. She’s sure there’s a story behind each and every one, but that’s not what draws her eyes. It’s the letters printed on her wrist in stark black lines.

“What’s that?” she asks before she can stop herself and Eda looks up from where she’d been staring into her Appleblood groggily.

“Huh?”

“That.” Luz points to the words on her wrist and Eda just stares at Luz like she asked her what 2+2 means.

“A soulmark…?” She says slowly.

“A… what…?” Luz breathes the words with a weight that she can feel pressing down on her shoulders. That can’t mean what she thinks it means, can it? There’s no way that she’s that lucky, she’s never been lucky before in her entire life.

Now Eda’s brows rise, surprise evident in her expression.

“You… don’t know what a soulmark is, do you?”

When she shakes her head, Eda lets out something halfway between an exasperated sigh and a laugh.

“I guess they don’t have those in the human world, huh?”

She launches into an explanation that spans the better part of an hour and goes off on tangents more often than not, but Luz gets the gist of it:

Every witchling is born with words inscribed in one of their wrists, and the words will be said at some point by the most important person in their life-- “We call them soulmates, but that’s not really the best term for it. Not everyone’s marks match each other, and the term soulmate implies that all matches are friendly, which they aren’t.”-- once said, the marks will change colour to match the speaker’s eyes. The marks come in various ways and various moments, sometimes they’re the first words that are spoken to each other, sometimes just important ones, but they are there to imply a connection. As far as witches are concerned they’ve existed since the beginning of time and aren’t going away any time soon.

“Any questions?” Eda finishes, taking a long sip from her mug.

Luz sits there for a moment, quiet for possibly the first time since she got to the Isles.

“...do they only show up on witches?” She asks finally, trying to ignore the way her voice shakes.

Eda blinks and glances out the kitchen window for a long, thoughtful moment.

“I’ve only ever heard of them on witches, and if you don’t have them in the human world, I don’t see why they would show up on anything else.”

The words on her wrist burn.

“Interesting.”

~🐰~

Just like all Witches, Amity was born with words on her wrist.

Unlike all Witches, her words said:

_I’m not a witch. But I’m training hard to be one._

What the everloving _fuck_ did that mean?

There were a variety of species on the boiling isles, of course, and many of them were sentient and/or intelligent, but as far as anyone knew none of them could carry a soulmark. And even if you ignored the first part of that phrase, the second was just as confusing.

_But I’m training hard to be one._

You don’t just _train_ to be a witch. Yes, being a witch did require training, of that she was infinitely familiar, but training was useless without a biological component. If one didn’t have magic bile, there was no way to do magic.

During her younger years her parents had spent countless hours and numerous resources trying to figure it out, but eventually came to the conclusion that the words were meaningless. _Wrong_. Out of context at the very least.

The moment she was old enough to walk and talk and go out in public she’d been trained to wear a wrist covering at all times. No one could know that a Blight, even the youngest Blight whose only inheritance would be the renown of the name itself, was flawed.

That much she’d understood.

Still, as the years went by and she watched more and more of her peers meet someone whose words changed colour, she couldn’t help but feel a growing pang in her chest. Words were meant to be shared, that was part of the reason for them being printed on the skin in the first place. It was a sign, a way to show a connection.

It was what kept them…

Mortal, really.

And, sure, maybe Amity was a Blight, and maybe the closest thing she’d ever had a to a real relationship had been chewed up and spat out by her stupid family reputation. Maybe the words were the way of the universe telling her that her soulmate wasn’t a real soulmate, just a pet or a companion. Maybe Amity was born to be alone.

But that didn’t change that it hurt.

Ed and Em had words, printed on opposite wrists in roughly scrawled script like the writers didn’t have the patience to shape each letter properly. 

Skara and Boscha had words, each written in the same flowering script they’d been taught by their family tutors when they were young.

Even Willow had words, written in simple neat handwriting that Amity had been unable to recognise as a child and, even now, couldn’t quite pinpoint to any one group or individual.

Amity had words, but every day she saw them she couldn’t help but wonder if they really meant anything. The handwriting seemed to change day-to-day even if the words didn’t, and when she took off her wrist-cover at the end of each day she couldn’t help but think they were mocking her in her misery.

Her loneliness only grew sharper with time.

~

Needless to say, Amity’s first impressions of Luz hadn’t exactly been in the Human’s favour. For one, she’d essentially helped her ex-childhood friend embarrass her in front of a teacher vital to her academic growth and gotten her ‘top-student’ badge revoked. For another, she’d been challenged to a Witch’s duel against a person who, as far as she could tell, couldn’t even do magic.

If Luz had just been a friend of Willow’s who got overzealous, that was one thing. The fact that she was apparently completely stupid was another.

The oath had been more to humour her than anything else. There was nothing for her to lose really, even if by some miracle Luz did end up beating her (doubtful) what was an apology in the grand scheme of things? And when she did win, what would Luz lose? Her pride? Her ‘magic’ which was likely her mentor just humouring the poor girl?

If anything, she’d be doing her a favour. Better to find out now then get her dreams crushed when she learned it the hard way.

Unfortunately, or _extremely_ fortunately depending on the way you looked at it, life almost never worked out the way that Amity expected it to.

~~~

“You lost! You cheated! Say it, say you’re not a Witch!” The green-haired girl shouted, shrouded in shadow, voice shaking with each accentuation of her words. The finger outstretched from her was a weapon pointed at the other girl in a desperate bid to keep her at bay.

“I’m not a Witch.” The Human replied, and her tone was calm. Her eyes downcast, her shoulders lowered in submission, but she didn’t retreat. Her legs bent, dropping herself to the floor in a movement performed by anyone else might’ve looked pleading, but rather than beg for forgiveness or lenience in her agreed-upon punishment, she pulled a pad of paper from her pocket.

The Witch froze, and for a moment only stared.

Then she sat across from the Human, trying to calm the sudden pounding in her chest.

The human drew a glyph, simple in shape and in power, before pressing a finger against the graphite. The paper crumpled, rising from its place in a small, warm ball of light. The human’s hands rose to cup beneath it, and in its radiance, she looked up at the witch and smiled a soft smile.

“But I’m training hard to be one.”

~~~

That answered some questions, at the very least.

  
  


~🐱~

Things happened so fast on the Boiling Isles that it was all Luz could do to keep up with it. One moment she was being trained by Eda and running around trying to complete some errands, the next she actually managed to make friends (and an enemy) for once in her life. Then the friends got her into hijinks, and she spent a day in Eda’s body, and suddenly the enemy was no longer an enemy but not quite a friend either. Then things changed again and it turned out the not-quite-friend was just a girl who was shy and insecure and actually really sweet under all that meanness.

Suddenly the not-quite-friend was a friend, and she was learning a new spell because she’d actually be going to Hexide and learning more magic, and things just _kept happening:_ Potions Track, Detention Track, all the Tracks, friends and enemies and school and bullies and memories, a school dance that turned out to actually be a front for a gladiator battle against a demon that could turn into your worst nightmares. Luz knew that the Boiling Isles were crazy, but she never really thought it wouldn't have even given her a chance to breathe.

Then again, maybe it was better that way.

Because when she did breathe all she could think about was home, her mother still thinking she was off at some summer camp that she’d never even set foot in. Sure, the Boiling Isles felt more and more like home every day, but Luz wasn’t stupid. She knew the Isles were dangerous, that every day could be her last because that was just the nature of a place not built for humans.

She felt understood for the first time of her life in the Isles, but she could only stay here so long. Mami was expecting her back, more than that, she was expecting a calmer, less weird version of her back. If there was one thing she could say about the Boiling Isles for certain, it was that they were definitely not helping her get less weird, if anything they were probably making it worse.

Part of her fear was her mother finding out about the Isles, she knew that was true, but that was only part. The other part was that maybe she didn’t love her mom enough to go back.

~

The monster wrapped one of its goopy tendrils of darkness around the green-haired girl’s form and lifted her into the air.

“I’m sorry Luz,” she said and Luz could tell she meant it because despite the creature of literal nightmare staring her down she was looking at her.

“Amity, no, your fear!” Luz shouted and though the fear had been ready to choke her earlier, now it was firmly eclipsed by the guilt rising in her chest. The whole point of this was to make sure that Amity wouldn’t have to do this, to spare her the pain.

Grometheus changed. First, he rose in a giant mountain of black, warping and changing and carrying Amity with him as he let out a sound akin to a million nails on a chalkboard. Then all as once he shrank, slowly lowering Amity to the ground with him until there was only a small form standing there, just barely a few inches her dwarf.

“Who’s that..?” Luz couldn’t stop the question.

Neither Amity nor Grom spoke. Grom reached out with a single-- almost human-looking-- hand, and placed it inside Amity’s pocket, drawing it out with that strange pink note in its grasp. Luz watched Amity’s face flinch, the knowing look flicker in her eyes, then Grom took the note in both hands, tearing it in half. Both dropped to the ground and Amity’s head followed in defeat.

Grom fell away, apparently certain it had already won the battle. Amity took one of the halves of paper and held it close to her chest. Luz rushed forwards to grab the second.

_Will you go to Grom with me?_

_Amity._

For some reason, Luz felt the air leave her lungs.

“You were afraid of getting rejected?” the words felt… strange to say aloud. Underwhelming perhaps, given the gravity of the situation. The look on Amity’s face, a mixture between resignation and lingering fear told her all that she needed to know. Grom only got part of the fear correct, just like it had for her.

Well, she could at least fix this part.

“Amity, it’s okay.” She offered her hand, “What if I went to Grom with you instead?”

It was like the clouds had parted overhead. A light shone inside of Amity’s eyes and she was already reaching for Luz’s outstretched hand before she was speaking.

“Really?”

Of course.

“That’s what friends do.”

Amity’s eyes closed and, though her smile stayed firmly in place, Luz could see just a bit of strain in it.

Grom chose that exact moment to make its presence known once more. It reared back it’s ugly head and roared, splitting itself into a long, many-legged creature with jaws twice the length of its body. Luz wasn’t sure whose fear that was, but it definitely wasn’t pleasant to look at.

“Well, then if that’s settled,” their hands had left each other momentarily, the surprise at Grom’s resurgence causing them to break apart. Now Amity offered her hand back to her and a smile was back on her lips, the strain nowhere to be found. “May I have this dance?”

_Oh._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe things aren't perfect.
> 
> Then again, neither are we.

~🐰~

It was safe to say that Amity had a crisis when she looked down at her wrist after leaving the human and saw that the letters had, in fact, changed colour. No longer the black hue that all unsaid marks were, no, now they were a warm brown colour that reminded her of chocolate or a particularly dark brew of coffee.

There was always the possibility that saying the words was a coincidence, that just happened sometimes, but them changing colour?

That couldn’t be a coincidence.

“Fuck.” Amity breathed the word like her life depended on it. 

She wasn’t home, not yet, and if she were honest she didn’t really feel up to trying to go home right now. She’d already had a disaster of a day, she didn’t need the twins and her parents breathing down her neck to cap it off. So she found herself walking to the library. Even if it was closed she knew her way around it well enough and knew every secret it had to offer.

But that didn’t stop the word from coming back to her, over and over again.

“Fuck.” She knew her parents would kill her for cursing, but she didn’t really care. Not when the word itself felt so therapeutic to the ones rushing around in her head and pinging off of each other like pinballs.

The Human.

Human.

No wonder her soulmark was so weird, no wonder her parents hadn’t ever been able to come up with an explanation for it, as far as anyone knew Humans had no innate magical ability. Not much was known about humans in general, but then again, why would they need to? A human in the Boiling Isles would just get themselves killed if they were lucky.

But The Human-

No.

But  _ Luz  _ had proven that wrong, hadn’t she?

She had cast a spell. Not Eda pretending for her sake, and not even with a spell circle.

She’d drawn a spell and it’d worked.

That was something she’d never seen, never even known to be possible.

The Library was open, thankfully, and so Amity managed to make her way to her hideout without having to resort to something semi-illegal. Even if she had the reputation and the name to get out of any trouble she might incur on herself, she liked to think she was better than that. Let the twins throw around their family name like it was a get-out-of-jail-free card, at least one of them was going to have to treat it with the respect it deserved.

_ It wasn’t the end of the world, _ she tried to reassure herself.  _ There’s plenty of different kinds of soulmates and even more kinds of marks. Maybe she’ll be your enemy, a rival, a friend, maybe just a coworker. _

The thoughts felt hollow, even to herself.

She pulled the key-book, and made sure the bookcase closed itself behind her before descending into her safety net. It wasn’t much, barely even secure all things considered, but it was better than home.

Anything was better than home.

Amity’s hands had found her diary before anything else could stop her, there was too much in her brain to try and channel it into anything else. Maybe she had homework, she didn’t remember, all she needed now was to get it all out of her head.

_ I ran into that  _ _ human  _ _ again-- _

~🐱~

The dance was a blur.

Oh, she remembers it, bits and pieces at least, but it’s all a tidal wave of emotions and shock and fear and adrenaline. Too much for her to even take in at a time, much less process. Before she knows it, the night is over, she’s back at the Owl House and King is wearing the Crown she’s pretty sure she got as Grom Queen.

Huh, she never thought she’d get to be royalty at a dance.

_ Focus!  _ Something snaps inside her mind that sounds suspiciously like Amity.

Oh, right.

_ Amity. _

“Fuck.”

“Luz!” Eda complains from where she’s attempting to free herself from the bowtie currently clamped around her neck. “Have you been holding out curses on me?”

She can hear the smirk in her voice, the good humour concealed by an air of confidence, snark, and indifference. Luz has long since grown used to Eda’s moods and knows most of the time it’s a front to conceal the fact she actually cares.

Kinda similar to a certain witch closer to her age.

“Fuck,” she says again, this time with more feeling.

That grabs Eda’s attention. She turns from the mirror, hands still tangled in her tie and brow risen in concern.

“Okay, I know that I didn’t teach you that. What’s going on?”

Luz isn’t looking at Eda, though. She’s staring at her wrist where she’s freed it from its binding for the first time since coming to the Boiling Isles. The letters glitter in the lamplight, a beautiful shade of amber that could be mistaken for gold in the right circumstances.

Eda’s brow, already risen, skyrockets up to her hairline.

“Holy-shit you have a-” she cuts herself off as Luz claps a hand over the mark, dragging her hand across it like that might make the letters go away. Like she can wipe away the confirmation for what she already knows.

“Fuuuck.”

For a moment neither of them speak, and King just watches them with wide, unsure eyes. Eventually, Eda gathers herself. She steps forward, tie forgotten, and places a hand on Luz’s shoulder, causing her eyes to snap up to her.

“Kid, how about you go sit yourself down and I’ll make some tea.”

It’s not a request, but it’s said softly enough that Luz knows if she refused that Eda wouldn’t push.

Luz sits down on the couch.

It’s a gruelling five minutes of waiting in the closest thing that passes for silence on the Boiling Isles before Eda comes into the living room, kettle and tea-set in hand. She sets it down on the table and pours three cups, one for herself, one for Luz, and a final for King who has made himself a little home in Luz’s tutu.

“So you have a mark,” Eda starts, tone carefully conversational. Luz will forever be impressed by the amount of social intelligence that Eda has for someone who is a self-proclaimed odd-ball and wanted criminal.

“Yeah…” Luz says the word but it sounds wrong, distant. Like it isn’t coming from her mouth.

Eda nods, sipping her tea.

“And your mark is activated, which I’m gonna go out on a limb and say happened tonight?”

This time Luz just nods.

Another thoughtful sip.

Luz’s hands are curled tightly around her own mug.

“So… who was it?”

Part of Luz wants to laugh. That, of all things, isn’t the issue here. 

“Amity,” She says, and this time the word doesn’t sound quite so distant.

Eda snorts.

“I figured something was going on there, but I didn’t suspect this…” the sentence hangs and Luz knows that Eda’s realized the heart of the issue, same as she has. “I thought you said there weren’t soulmarks in the human world?” The question is tentative, like she’s expecting-- no,  _ hoping--  _ that Luz will tell her she’s wrong.

Luz finally drags her gaze up to meet Eda’s. 

“There aren’t.”

Eda stares back, then glances down at her tea, then back up at Luz.

“Huh.”

Luz blinks.

“Huh?”

Eda nods.

“Yeah, huh.”

…

“Are… you gonna elaborate…?”

“Have you always had the mark, or did it develop after you got here?”

Luz supposes that is a fair question.

“Always had it. Doctors thought it was crazy when they saw it, I had to go through, like, fifty-million tests to prove it was actually a part of me and not, like, some crazy tattoo or whatever.”

Eda’s quiet for a moment, not drinking this time, but just staring at her tea in thought.

“Huh.”

Luz scowls.

“Can you please stop just saying, huh.”

Eda winces.

“Sorry kid, I’m just processing here. So, there’s really only two explanations I can think of.”

Now that’s more like it.

“Two?”

Eda nods and straightens in her seat, setting down her mug.

“So, number one: just the fact that you have a soulmate who is a witch is enough to grant you a soulmark.”

Luz supposes that’s possible, but if that were the case then--

“If that were true then Amity wouldn’t have a mark.”

Eda’s brows rise.

“Does she have one?”

Luz wants to argue that she does, all Witches do, but now that she thinks about it, she’s never seen it. Willow and Gus wore theirs like badges of honour, proof that there was someone out there they had yet to meet who would change their life forever. Several other students at Hexide bore their wrists for the world to see. Amity, on the other hand…

Amity wore long-sleeved clothes, and only long-sleeved clothes. Tonight was the first time she’d seen her with anything that had short sleeves and, even then, she’d worn a bracelet on her left wrist.

“What’s the other option?” she says instead.

Eda sighs.

“Number two:” she holds up a hand for emphasis, “you have some Witch blood in you.”

_ That  _ was the issue.

If Luz did have some Witch blood in her, then what did that mean for her arrival and stay in the Boiling Isles? What did that mean regarding her mother and her life back on Earth? What did that mean for her continued study of magic and use of it?

“Is there a way to find out if it’s number two?” she asks, soft and small.

Eda’s lips press into a straight line.

“Theoretically, yes. The Emperor has certain instruments that only work on Witches and those with witch blood, but considering that you made it through that barrier that only humans can pass through, I’d say that test is kinda moot. If you do have Witch blood, that just means his instruments are faulty.”

Luz finds herself mirroring her mentor’s expression.

“So the only way to know for sure--”

“Is to find out if your little girlfriend has a matching mark.”

Well then.

“Fuck.”

~🐰~

Grom had been… eventful.

That wasn’t to say that was a bad thing. Sure, she’d ended up facing Grometheus in the end, but she’d gotten to dance with Luz and even spent the rest of the night as her date. Even if it was only as friends, that was progress, right?

Right?

Amity lets out a sigh filled with as much exasperation as possible before collapsing into her pillow for the fourth time. She’d been trying to sort out the mess that was this whole entire situation for the past few weeks to little to no end. 

First it had been simple, she just had to figure out what kind of soulmate Luz was to her. That was easy enough, a couple more interactions should make that perfectly clear. Then the Library Incident happened and she was even less sure than before. On the one hand, Luz had helped her siblings go through her safe haven and trash the library, not to mention read her diary. On the other, she’d saved her life, given her a copy of a missing book from her favourite series, and laughed like _ that. _

Needless to say, she’d taken that book home and mulled over it for a good few days. Once she’d finally gotten around to reading the thing (and discovering just how amazing it was) she’d decided to give Luz another chance. Mistakes happened and she hadn’t exactly given her much reason to be nice to her, but she was still trying and that had to count for something. Especially since she didn’t seem to have the same indication of the significance of their relationship.

Then things had gotten complicated real fast.

Spells and magic and demons, those were all things she understood. She’d been studying them all her life, she knew them infinitely well and would continue to study them for the rest of time. Emotions were not so straight forward.

One minute her and Luz stood atop the beginnings of a shaky friendship, the next Amity was struggling to control her breathing around the other girl and her heart felt like it was always trying to make a frantic escape from her chest.

_ Oh,  _ she thought belatedly,  _ we’re  _ **_that_ ** _ kind of soulmates. _

Luz didn’t seem to notice.

She supposed that was fair, or at least in a sick, twisted kind of way it was. Life had never been fair or particularly kind to Amity. Giving her Luz, even just as they currently were, was the most kindness it’d ever shown her. Luz was forgiving, was strong and brave. Sure, maybe she wasn’t the smartest or most observant, but she was charming in her own strange, endearing way.

Always had been.

It made sense that if the universe were to be kind enough to give her this, it would hide a weapon inside of it. Luz was her soulmate, the colour of her words proved that. The problem was, she didn’t think she could be hers. Humans weren’t supposed to be able to have marks, the fact that Amity had one pertaining to a human meant nothing. Luz was still human. Was still markless as far as she could tell.

So she’d decided to try and go about it the human way. It was the least she could do. A dance here, a date there, maybe a kiss somewhere down the line. Prove to Luz that the universe had chosen right in all the ways she could before baring her wrist to her and explaining the truth.

That’d been the plan, anyway.

She could feel the heat blazing along her cheeks.

“Stupid Grom.”

“Mittens, can you keep it down in here?”

Edric’s voice is groggy, and she doesn’t really want to have to deal with his particular brand of sass right now. He was softer than Emira, if only because she was the one carrying the wit to back up their equally sharp tongues.

“Go to bed Edric,” she replies. She receives silence in response.

She let out a breath.

“I was trying to, but your dramatic gay ass kept waking me up.”

Amity grabs the nearest object, a pillow, unfortunately, and lugs it at his head. He catches it one-handed and slowly lowers it from his face, smirk firmly planted behind it.

“That was just sad, Mittens.”

Amity finally let out a groan.

“What do you want?”

Edric rolls his eyes and lets the pillow drop from his grasp with an anti-climatic thump. 

“To know what’s got you in here flopping around like a maniac.” He crosses her room in four long strides before coming to rest on the bed beside her. Her room is neat, of course, there were consequences for it not being kept presentable, but even she has her lapses. The remains of her Grom-night are scattered throughout. A shoe here, a cup there, the evidence of thirteen abandoned grom-posals littered across her desk, just little things. Edric’s eyes skip over all of them in a way that tell her more about his night than anything else. He and Emira had been home long before she had, and she hadn’t stopped to question why.

Too caught up her own problems, she guessed, like always. Little Amity Blight, little miss perfect until it came to what really mattered.

“I just… had an eventful night…” she tries to brush him off. Edric and Emira can mean well, even if it is a rarer occurrence with each passing day. 

They weren’t born cruel, just like she wasn’t. They were just shaped by their childhood: an endless competition that would never truly be resolved. Twins, born at the same time, the heirs to the Blight family fortune who had to share it, regardless if they liked it or not. It never helped that they looked so much alike, that they were perfect mirror images of each other. Amity had been added to the competition, much to her dismay, because of her success in all the things her siblings failed at. The twins were excellent spellcasters, but Amity was the better student, the politer child, the more responsible one, the _perfect_ one. Mittens had originally been a jab at her hands, disproportionately small compared to the rest of her, an imperfection her siblings had fixated on in an attempt to make her feel small, less threatening.

Of course, things had changed as life often did, but there always remained an undercurrent of that competition in their interactions. Even if it was more formality than anything else. Amity could be the ‘perfect’ child all she wanted, it didn’t change that she was born last, born  _ wrong  _ with a wrong mark and the wrong colour hair.

Their parents had made that perfectly clear.

Edric doesn’t take the bait, instead fixing her with one of those tired looks reserved only for serious moments.

“Amity. What’s up?”

Amity always feels like crying when they use her real name.

“I just…” she doesn’t have the words. She knows she doesn’t because she’d already tried. Her diary sits empty, not a single word, just endless scribbles and frantic doodles. Words cannot encapsulate what she feels, what she’s trying not to feel. There’s too much.

She makes a gesture, one that’s meant to just be a physical manifestation of her frustration, but as she lets her hands fall forwards, palms facing up, she remembers one vital detail.

Her wrist-cover is off.

The moonlight catches on her pale skin and in its glow the words are more than molten chocolate or rich coffee. In its glow they glitter and gleam and shine like a million stars.

_ Just like Luz’s eyes. _

Edric’s eyes follow the motion on reflex and catch on the words and their glittering state.

They widen.

She retreats, retracts, but Edric catches her hand.

He pulls it towards him and stares. The words aren’t new, he’s made fun of them plenty of times, but he must guess the meaning, or at least the only logical conclusion.

“Oh.”

Amity swallows.

“Oh shit-”

“Don’t tell Emira!” she pleas.

Edric blinks.

“I… what?”

“Please,” Amity looks into her brother’s eyes for once and tries not to think about how much they look like hers, “I’m… I need to do this on my own, and that means without you or her breathing down my neck teasing me the whole time, okay?”

Edric just stares at her like she’s grown a second head.

“Amity, this is serious.” He says after an extended silence. “What do you think Mother and Father are gonna say when they find out your soulmate is…” he trails off.

Amity swallows a growing feeling of doom in her throat.

“They’re not going to find out.” She says the words like she means them, like she knows that she can do them, like they’re a promise.

Edric doesn’t look convinced.

“You can’t hide this forever.”

Amity wants to agree with him.

“The Blight fortune was never mine to begin with.” She says instead. “So what if Mother and Father don’t like it, what are they gonna do, disown me? Kick me out? Deal with the media scandal of rejecting their own daughter? They can’t change my mark, as much as they might like.”

Edric’s grip on her arm tightens.

“And what about me and Emira?” he asks, voice bordering on frantic, “We’re supposed to just let that happen? Okay, so maybe they can’t reject you, but they can make your life a living hell.”

“Then I’ll leave.”

Silence fills the room.

It’s not the first time one of them has threatened to run away, but it is the first time that Amity has said it.

The first time one of them really meant it.

Edric releases her arm, but he doesn’t move.

She doesn’t either.

He stares into her eyes and she forces herself not to back down from the unspoken challenge. Finally, he breaks, dropping his head.

“Sometimes I wonder how the hell we’re related.”

Amity almost laughs. Almost.

“Genetics is a fucking roulette wheel.”

That finally breaks the tension. Edric looks back up at her, a wry smile on his face even if it only barely manages to grace the corners of his eyes.

“I won’t say anything.”

He says it like an oath.

She believes him.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime, Mittens.”

~

The next couple days bring nothing special to the table. Sure, things happen, spells go wrong, Amity does her homework and finishes all her tests.

Edric keeps his word.

Then Grudgeby season starts.

And all hell breaks loose.

~~~

“Amity!”

“Oh! Luz! You’re here!”

…

“I mean- obviously you’re here, this is school, and you go here now, with, uh, me…”

…

“I’vebeentalkingtoolong.”

~~~

“Amity, we need your help-”

“Yes! I can help!”

…

“With… what… exactly…?”

~~~

“What about you Amity?”

“Me? On a team? With you?”

…

“Running around in cute uniforms?”

…

“sWeAtInG?!”

…

“IGOTTAGO!”

~~~

Oh, how Amity hates her big stupid mouth.

She had this under control, she knew that she had this under control because she’d gone a full two weeks without saying or doing anything more obvious than carrying a note around all day (and blushing every time she was near Luz, but she was about as dense as a brick wall so that didn’t count).

Then Grom happened.

And Luz, stupid, stupid Luz and her big heart and her beautiful eyes and-

GAH!

~🐱~

“Tough practice?”

There she is in all of her glory, Amity Blight. Descended upon her just after everything went wrong like some kind of strange guardian angel with a watch two minutes slow.

Funny, she wonders, do guardian angels exist in the Boiling Isles? Clearly they’ve got some kind of belief system if they have so much faith in the marks?

Ah, right.

The marks.

She hasn’t responded yet and Amity’s gentle concern is becoming sharper by the second. The softness in her brows is beginning to trend towards a painful altitude as she lowers herself onto the bench beside Luz.

They still haven’t talked about that, have they?

She glances down and, sure enough, Amity is wearing long sleeves once again.

No wonder she’s so red all the time, she must be boiling, it’s the dead of summer.

“Hey Amity…” she mutters softly, unable to muster enough energy for her usual greeting. Amity’s brows relax, if only to be accompanied by the drop of the corners of her mouth.

“That bad?”

Luz winces.

“I pushed Willow and Gus too hard. It’s just- I know what it’s like, y’know? To be the weird kid who gets bullied all the time and Willow’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had! I just… I just wanted to help…”

Amity watches her for a moment, unmoving and silent as stone. Then, slowly and gently, she reaches out and places a hand against Luz’s.

“Did you know… before Boscha, I was the team captain?”

She tells her the story and of course, it’s enthralling and enchanting and all of the things that make up the incredible person that is Amity, but it’s also soft. It’s understanding, it’s gentle, it’s relatable it’s…

Exactly what she needs.

Amity finishes her story and looks up to meet Luz’s gaze once more.

Her eyes are a brilliant amber.

Luz’s wrist aches.

“Amity, I-”

Footsteps and loud, raucous laughter break the moment in two.

She curls one of her hands into a fist.

“I know what I have to do.”

~

“Where’s-” Willow starts asking the question, but Luz knows the end of it before it leaves her mouth and already starts looking for her missing teammate. She’s there, a bit bruised but no worse for wear other than the-

-wrist hanging from a particularly awkward angle…

Shit.

“Amity!” Luz is moving even before she speaks, but Amity doesn’t quite seem to notice. Her eyes are fixed firmly on the offending appendage with an expression that seems a bit too calm for the situation. It’s more annoyed than anything else.

She doesn’t move until Luz is at her side, gently pulling the arm from her grasp.

“Wha-” she starts before trailing off in a hiss of pain, “Luz, I’m fine-”

“You’re not fine.” She cuts her off with a stern glare, one that she learned from her mother but rarely had a chance to use. Apparently it works because Amity’s mouth closes with a click of teeth, followed by a flush of colour. She really needs to stop wearing long sleeves all the time if she’s so prone to heat. “I’m pretty sure your wrist is broken.”

“It’s just a little sprain-” Amity argues, albeit weakly.

Willow finally makes it over, takes one look at the hand in Luz’s grasp, and flinches.

“Yeah- no that’s definitely broken, Amity.”

More colour rises in Amity’s face and Luz tries to offer her an apologetic smile as consolation.

“It’s okay, I know first aid,” she gently hooks her fingers beneath the cloth of Amity’s glove and begins to work it off, careful not to disturb what has to be an extremely painful break to achieve an angle like that. “My mom’s a nurse and she practically forced me to take classes for it since I could talk.”

She’s managed to get it half-way off before Amity’s other hand clamps down on hers.

“L-Luz it’s fine…”

For the first time in a while Luz actually takes in Amity’s face. She’s in pain, sure, as to be expected, but she’s also nervous. She’s not sure why, the game itself is over, but there is sweat running along her brow. A smile in place, stretched just a fragment too wide, her eyebrows titled just a bit too far up.

“You don’t… You don’t need to worry about me. A quick trip to the nurse and I’ll be back to normal.” Her tone is reassuring, but it doesn’t match her expression. Doesn’t match her eyes which are--

\--trained on her exposed wrist…

Luz’s follow her gaze and catch on the exposed black lines--

No, exposed  _ brown  _ lines.

_ I’m not a Witch. But I’m training hard to be one. _

Like most people, Luz doesn’t remember every word she’s said. Like most people, Luz doesn’t memorize conversations, even very important ones.

But she recognises her own eye-colour, and that she’s the only person who could  _ possibly  _ say something like that.

Heat fills Luz’s face.

That breaks the spell, if only for a moment, as Amity begins spluttering in what Luz can only assume to be morbid embarrassment. Willow, who seems to have already guessed what is going on, is trying her hardest to usher away the other girls with the excuse of everything being under control.

Leaving the two of them alone.

“Luz, I’m so sorry I should’ve told you-” Luz opens her mouth to try and object, but the words are leaving Amity in a tidal wave she can’t quite seem to control. Her face is growing more and more colourful by the second, accompanied by a tremble in her voice. “I just- I didn’t even know if humans could have soulmarks and then I was so worried because who knew what kind of soulmates we’d be?! Then everything at the Library happened, then at the Knee and with Willow... so I kept putting it off and by the time Grom got around I was just starting to figure it out, or at least I thought I was until we did that stupid dance and then suddenly it was like:  _ Oh, okay, we’re  **that** kind _ _ of soulmates, _ and I didn’t know what to do and then Edric found out and-”

“Amity slow down!” Luz finally manages to break in.

Amity’s mouth still doesn’t stop.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just- I don’t know- and everything just happened at once and-”

“-Amity-”

“I’m just so stupid! And dumb, and a coward and-”

Luz grabs both sides of Amity’s face, forcing her to find focus.

Amity cuts herself off with an abrupt squeak.

“Amity, it’s okay.”

Her eyes are amber, a little red, a little small with fear and adrenaline, but they’re still beautiful. They’re still Amity. Still the same colour as the letters printed on Luz’s wrist.

A smile is pulling at the corners of her mouth and, yeah, sure, maybe things aren’t perfect. Maybe there’s still so much to figure out, especially because of what Amity having a matching mark means in accordance with Luz’s heritage and destiny. Maybe Amity is still scared, and maybe the cards are stacked against them.

But they have this.

And this is real.

So Luz lets the smile stretch across her face and watches as the tension begins to leak out of Amity’s form. She releases Amity’s face and gently peels back her own glove to show her the matching golden mark.

_ Maybe things aren’t perfect. _

Amity’s eyes widen, her hands go to grab onto Luz’s so she can get a better look, but she freezes in pain before she really can. Luz gently eases Amity’s arm back into a more comfortable position, careful not to touch the break itself.

Amity smiles through the strain.

“Guess we were both being a little dumb,” Luz says for her.

Amity laughs.

_ Then again, neither are we. _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really just kinda jumping between projects right now like a chicken running around with its head cut off, so if you came here to harass me to update something else, sorry! I'm too busy slamming my head against a wall in an attempt to write anything with more plot than a soulmate au, so enjoy this while you can. BYE!


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